


Chimera

by RonsGirlFriday



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Bitterness, F/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 22:10:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21417484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RonsGirlFriday/pseuds/RonsGirlFriday
Summary: I had a dream. Her name was Lilith. She walked like fire and talked like diamonds, and she laughed like Aztec gold. She danced just out of my reach and dangled apples over my head, but I could not grasp them. She whispered in my ear but didn’t touch me, and when an apple finally fell it was already rotted through.Banner by princesswithoutathrone @ TDA.
Relationships: Lily Evans Potter/Severus Snape
Kudos: 9





	Chimera

I went to the rooftop to take the measure of humanity. Soot stuck to my feet and a fog hung low over the chimneys, but still I could see, as clearly as I could view my own two hands in front of my face. And all around me those cretins called humans were lying, cheating, and destroying civilization one blackened soul at a time.

I knew myself, I knew this was my world, as certainly as I knew my own name. But I was a boy and (sometimes I still think) I could have been an innocent - so when the sky opened up and rained down pearls, seducing me with promises of a world in which I did not belong, I raised my hands and opened my mouth and swallowed the illusion whole.

I had a dream. Her name was Lilith. She walked like fire and talked like diamonds, and she laughed like Aztec gold. She danced just out of my reach and dangled apples over my head, but I could not grasp them. She whispered in my ear but didn’t touch me, and when an apple finally fell it was already rotted through.

You lied to me, though you were always true. You were constant, steady, a touchstone, and when I stood close to you I was aware how truly base I was.

Did I tarnish you when I touched you with cold and trembling fingers? Did you wash your hand fifty times after? I’m sorry. I only meant to comfort you as you cried.

I had a dream. Her name was Venus. She was fickle as the sky and her voice ran in rivers over the world. She loved to play with the hearts of men but locked up her own far away. She whispered in my ear, then fled to her tower, leaving me to my dungeons.

Could you love a man with the soul of a poet, if he had a face like the back end of a bus? I thought you could have, once, but you chose the face of a god with the soul of a used broom salesman. You resided on the mountain with the other immortals and tossed me crumbs from your banquets.

My home was always safe underground…and that, more than anything, should have told me I was already dead, though my heart still beat like a desperate clock.

My soul flickered, a candle fighting its last hour, as it was coated steadily with grime. And I looked at the world as if through a window, three inches deep in grease, and saw it for what it truly was. It called me its child, and I was home.

I had a dream. She was a Siren. She whispered to me, lured me with wicked promises and told me the world could be mine. It was a filthy, disgusting thing, but men have always wanted to own it. I sought it, too. It was vile, like me.

I would have given it to you, tainted and unworthy as it was. Perhaps you could have cleansed it of its sins. It could have been exquisite, like you. But, then, where would I have belonged?

I saw the world for what it was, and I knew despair. I closed my eyes and was dashed upon the unforgiving rocks, swept away by muddy waters, until I had drowned in the ash of fallen stars, once beautiful but now desolate and charred.

A child took my hand, and told me not to be afraid.

**Author's Note:**

> _A 2010 one-shot migrated over from my HPFF account._


End file.
